International Day of Zero Tolerance to Female Genital Mutilation

Case Study

06 February 2019

International Day of Zero Tolerance to Female Genital Mutilation

Since September 2017, Ireland has been working with the National Association of Women Organisation of Uganda (NAWOU) to prevent Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in districts in the Karamoja region and to educate communities.

NAWOU is an umbrella organisation of women-founded and women-led organisations. After just one year, some positive results are already emerging. Over 35 stakeholders, including government leaders, medical workers, police, board members of local partner organisations, community members and other stakeholders from Amudat, Moroto and Nakapiripirit, signed a commitment to contribute to ending FGM. A pool of 95 local resource persons, or FGM activists from the two districts (Amudat and Moroto (Tapac)), have been given training and information about FGM related topics. These include the FGM Act; policies; legal frameworks on gender and human rights; and skills for facilitating community dialogues on human rights issues, specifically the rights of girls and women.

Irish Aid has also been working on raising awareness of FGM in 7 primary schools and has facilitated peer support, through Human Rights Clubs. Ireland has supported the building of two dormitories in schools in Amudat. These dormitories are providing refuge to girls who have run away from FGM at community level. In 2018, these dormitories hosted over 200 girls.

A tailoring project in Katikit primary school has also taken off with 10 sewing machines being provided. Girls are being equipped with skills so they can generate their own income to maintain themselves at school. The project has also partnered with the Social Protection Programme by targeting senior citizens of the Cash transfer beneficiaries as champions against FGM.

The Uganda Country Strategy Paper (CSP) sets out Ireland’s planned engagement with Uganda from 2016 to 2020. In the CSP, Ireland’s embassy in Uganda outlined the portion of the budget that has been allocated as part of the Governance Programme to support Civil Society Organisation. This budget is being used to undertake short and targeted interventions, to address on-going and/or emerging issues that are critical to the Irish Aid programme in Uganda.